"Adrian Furminger" <adrianfurminger@thefurmingerfamilytree.co.uk> wrote in
message news:4433D89A00001851@mail-dom-4.tiscali.it...

"Since it is quite clear from
http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/kwhs/subject.html where all the authors
are listed that Eleazar ha-Levy is a pseudonym (as per wargaming), one can
hardly regard this as a reliable academic source."

Hence my question to this list ! ! ! All theories have to start somewhere
and the process or proving or disproving them eventually leads to fact.
(we hope)

Perhaps you can tell me Is FURMAGER a jewish word and does it translate to
"Tax Farmer" or similar ?

I would suggest that you are more likely to explore the origins of the word
by talking to an (academic) expert in Medieval or Norman French.

For what it is worth I don't imagine that it is a Jewish word.

I do note that there is a reference in
http://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/community/exe/history/medievaljew.htm to a
Joseph Furmager who was "one of the leaders of (pre-Expulsion) Bristol
Jewry". Given that the Jews of England arrived with the Normans I don't see
why the name should have a specific Jewish origin - but rather be the French
which it sounds like.

Indeed this church record
http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F2703%2FNuns%2F231c
refers to Robert le Furmager.

As an aside anyone can publish anything on the Internet which is not the
normal means of academic review. You have now used as a reference on your
website this source on the Internet in which anyone can write anything they
like without any peer review.

In modern times these would be called rumours - they are quite difficult to
disprove today - let alone with reference to 800 years ago.

Nick Landau
London, UK

COHNREICH (Anklam, Germany Krajenka, Poland) ATLAS (Wielkie Oczy (near
Lvov/Lemberg), Poland) WEITZMAN (Cracow), WECHSLER(Schwabach, Germany)
KOHN/WEISSKOPF (Wallerstein and Kleinerdlingen,Germany) LANDAU (only adopted
on leaving Belarus or later)/FREDKIN (?) (Gomel, Mogilev, Chernigov,
Belarus)